“Turn over. That’s her, leaving her room, shot from behind. Someone ought to tell her she oughtn’t to leave security camera footage lying around like that, someone might steal it. Turn over.” Reluctantly, he turned over. “That’s her, in the passageway to a room in—” Matthias coughed discreetly into his fist. “And over, and oh dear, there seems to be a camera behind the bathroom mirror, doesn’t there? I wonder how that got there. And now if you turn over, you’ll see that—”

Roland slammed the folder shut with an inarticulate growl, then slapped it down on the desk. “What’s your point?” he demanded, shaking with anger. “What the fuck do you want? Spying on me—”

“Sit down,” snapped Matthias.

Roland sat, shoulders hunched.

“You’ve put me on the spot, did you know that? I could show this to Angbard, you realize. In fact, I should show it to him. I’ve got a duty to show it to him. But I haven’t—yet. I could show it to Lady Olga, too, but I think neither you nor she would care about that unless I embarrassed her publicly. Which would raise too many questions. What in Lightning Child’s name were you thinking of, Roland?”

“Don’t.” Roland hunched forward, eyes narrowed in pain.

“If Angbard sees this, he will rip you a new asshole. To be fair, he might rip her a new asshole too, but she’s better positioned to survive the experience. You—” he shook his head. “I see a long future for you as Clan ambassador to the Iroquois. Or maybe the Apache nation. For as long as any Clan ambassador lasts in one of those posts.”

“You haven’t told him, though.” Roland stared at the floor in front of the desk, trying to hide his suspicions. Surely Matthias wouldn’t be telling him this if he was just going to go straight to the duke?

“Well, no.” His interrogator fell silent for a while. “I’m not a robot, you know. Loyal servant, yes—but I have my own ambitions.”

“‘Ambitions’?” Roland looked up, his expression strained.

“The Clan doesn’t offer an ideal career track for such as I.” He shrugged. “I expect you to understand that better than most of them.”

Roland licked his lips. “What do you want?” he asked quietly. “What are you after?”

“I’m after the status quo ante.” He picked up the file and slid it into a desk drawer. “Your little…servant…made waves where she shouldn’t have. I want her out of the picture: I hasten to add, this doesn’t mean dead, it just means invisible.”

“You want her to disappear.” For an instant, an expression of hope flickered across Roland’s face.

“Possibly.” He nodded. “I think you’d like that—if you went with her. Wouldn’t you?”

“Damn you, three years was all I had…!”